I'm not really sad about leaving the library. It's been great, and I've loved my time there, but I'm ready for something new.
What I will miss is Kelly, my coworker of the last two months, my replacement, and my newest kindred spirit. She's nearly 20 years older than me, married with two kids, but we have so much fun together. We sit back at the SRP table, talking about books and movies and what we did the night before. I told her about my ridiculous crush on Tom Hiddleston, and then we spent the next hour looking up cute guys on the internet.
She's silly, and we laugh a lot, but I also really admire her. I'm so glad to be passing my job onto her--she gets that we're a public library, that it's our duty to provide books of all kinds, not just what we prefer. She tries not to have opinions until she is familiar with the source (which led to a really hilarious and interesting discussion of Fifty Shades of Grey after she read it to see what the fuss was all about). She's awesome.
Today I pulled her into our office to show her this hilarious video that has been cracking me up every time I think about it. She laughed along, and I said I really want to Loki someone with an obnoxious stupid prank.
An hour later, I walked into the office, and she burst out laughing. I was...a little alarmed.
"I Loki'd you!"
"Ack! What!?"
"I Loki'd you, and you don't even know! It's so stupid, but I can't figure out how to get you to realize it." She was cracking up so hard that I burst out laughing too.
She changed my facebook to pirate talk. HAHAHA. Loki'd.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Stories from the Library
Kelly and I entered the break room at the same time this morning, and she greeted me with, "I caught a little bit of Midnight in Paris last night. Your guy (Tom Hiddleston) was...yeah. He's very cute. His voice!"
I swooned in agreement.
**
Today was the first time Kelly did story time instead of me, and when the kids came out afterwards, little Traian approached me at the SRP table and asked, "Why didn't you in story time?" I told him I was leaving, and his face fell before he ran back to his mom. She immediately asked if she could take a picture of the two of us, so I went over and hugged him and smiled. He retreated to his mom's lap, then peeked up at me and said, "I love you."
My poor heart.
**
During the afternoon, the kid's section was bustling. A family was crammed onto the couch, each one reading their own book. Kids sat at tables doing puzzles, and others sat on the floor with our stuffed animals. One little guy came up to my desk to get his prizes, then glanced over and saw a stuffed lion on the back of the couch.
"Meow!" he said in its direction. Which was also in the direction of that reading family. "Meow mraow!" he continued. They looked up to see what weird kid was meowing in the library, and saw him looking...at them. For a beat they were all shell-shocked, then one noticed the lion behind their heads. The kid by my desk was nonplussed by their confusion, continuing to meow for at least two minutes.
**
Two new girls came in and perused my prize display even though they were not signed up for the program. They were so sneaky, commenting on how many erasers I have, and did I know how pretty they were? The 5-year-old fell in love with me, and we "hung out" for a while as their mom looked for her own books. The 3-year-old desperately wanted her older sister to play with her, but her pleas were unsuccessful. Finally she marched up to her older sister, grabbed her face between her hands, and aggressively said, "Sissy, I just want you to know, I. Love. You." Then she stomped back to the chair where she was feeding the lion a banana.
I swooned in agreement.
**
Today was the first time Kelly did story time instead of me, and when the kids came out afterwards, little Traian approached me at the SRP table and asked, "Why didn't you in story time?" I told him I was leaving, and his face fell before he ran back to his mom. She immediately asked if she could take a picture of the two of us, so I went over and hugged him and smiled. He retreated to his mom's lap, then peeked up at me and said, "I love you."
My poor heart.
**
During the afternoon, the kid's section was bustling. A family was crammed onto the couch, each one reading their own book. Kids sat at tables doing puzzles, and others sat on the floor with our stuffed animals. One little guy came up to my desk to get his prizes, then glanced over and saw a stuffed lion on the back of the couch.
"Meow!" he said in its direction. Which was also in the direction of that reading family. "Meow mraow!" he continued. They looked up to see what weird kid was meowing in the library, and saw him looking...at them. For a beat they were all shell-shocked, then one noticed the lion behind their heads. The kid by my desk was nonplussed by their confusion, continuing to meow for at least two minutes.
**
Two new girls came in and perused my prize display even though they were not signed up for the program. They were so sneaky, commenting on how many erasers I have, and did I know how pretty they were? The 5-year-old fell in love with me, and we "hung out" for a while as their mom looked for her own books. The 3-year-old desperately wanted her older sister to play with her, but her pleas were unsuccessful. Finally she marched up to her older sister, grabbed her face between her hands, and aggressively said, "Sissy, I just want you to know, I. Love. You." Then she stomped back to the chair where she was feeding the lion a banana.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
The More I Stay the Same
I've been reading my high school blog (which I printed thanks to lulu.com!). It is a bizarre experience to read something and think, "Oh my gosh, I am JUST like that!" only to remember that, well, I wrote it.
I've only read about the February of my junior year, and already I'm struck by how little I've changed. Eight years ago, I was in love with love, I knew I wanted to study psychology for the rest of my life (even specifying gender studies as a point of interest, which I didn't remember being interested in until three years later), I was infatuated with death (understandably, since it was in February that two girls in my high school died), and also, there was this gem of a sentence describing the Christian Guard game when I ran face-first into a chair. "Blood is just gushing onto my hands and it's really gross. It doesn't hurt anymore though, which was kind of weird. So I just stand at the sink and try to rinse off my hands while blood splatters all over the sink and covers the basin. I wish I'd taken a picture of it, because it was a LOT of blood."
I was such a weird little nerd. And the fact that I burst out laughing because I still feel the need to document incredibly gross and personal moments proves that I am still a weird little nerd.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Can't We All Just Get Along? (Yes, We Can!)
Warning: There are two mild curse words later in this post.
When I visited Jennie a few weeks ago, we talked a lot about motherhood and dealing with kids. What made this conversation special was that she consistently said, "whether you have kids biologically or adopt them" throughout every example.
This is a perfect display of Friendship: You're Doing it Right.
Jennie knows I want to adopt, and she included my desires and passions into her conversation. That is consideration. But more than simple friendship, I am struck by the idea that this is what being a "good person" is all about. This is the desired end result of political correctness. This is how people can overcome racism and sexism and ageism and all the other -isms dirtying our world.
It's not even that hard: think of others first. Put yourself in someone else's head, and take their feelings into account.
I read a great quote on tumblr (the site that is, for me, all about geekery and social justice) that says something like this: A remark is exactly as offensive as the person being offended says it is.
Brilliant. That makes any privileged assumption that "they shouldn't be offended by that!" completely ridiculous. We don't control what offends other people. We only control whether or not we continue to offend them.
There's a movement where certain words are reappropriated by the people who used to be demeaned by them (I'm thinking specifically of African Americans using the n-word and women using the b-word). And that's fine. They are re-defining whether or not a word is hurtful or not. Sometimes other people then think that they are allowed to use those words without complaint. And that's simply not true. It's like the old saying about "I can insult my family, but you'd better not." If a woman calls her friends bitches in jest, then gets offended when a man calls her a bitch, she has every right to do so.
Confusing? Potentially. But that's the other thing I learned from my conversation with Jennie. She knows me. There's a very good chance she wouldn't have peppered her thoughts with adoption clauses if she hadn't been talking to me. But she was, so she did.
The only way we can guarantee being compassionate and loving to everyone is to get to know everyone. Learn what makes certain groups of people, and certain individuals, uncomfortable. And then don't do or say those things. Inevitably we all say offensive things to each other, but the key is to ask forgiveness and then change, or to tell someone when you are offended. Only with honesty and a ready forgiveness can we deal with issues of stereotypes and prejudice.
Thus endeth my soap box.
When I visited Jennie a few weeks ago, we talked a lot about motherhood and dealing with kids. What made this conversation special was that she consistently said, "whether you have kids biologically or adopt them" throughout every example.
This is a perfect display of Friendship: You're Doing it Right.
Jennie knows I want to adopt, and she included my desires and passions into her conversation. That is consideration. But more than simple friendship, I am struck by the idea that this is what being a "good person" is all about. This is the desired end result of political correctness. This is how people can overcome racism and sexism and ageism and all the other -isms dirtying our world.
It's not even that hard: think of others first. Put yourself in someone else's head, and take their feelings into account.
I read a great quote on tumblr (the site that is, for me, all about geekery and social justice) that says something like this: A remark is exactly as offensive as the person being offended says it is.
Brilliant. That makes any privileged assumption that "they shouldn't be offended by that!" completely ridiculous. We don't control what offends other people. We only control whether or not we continue to offend them.
There's a movement where certain words are reappropriated by the people who used to be demeaned by them (I'm thinking specifically of African Americans using the n-word and women using the b-word). And that's fine. They are re-defining whether or not a word is hurtful or not. Sometimes other people then think that they are allowed to use those words without complaint. And that's simply not true. It's like the old saying about "I can insult my family, but you'd better not." If a woman calls her friends bitches in jest, then gets offended when a man calls her a bitch, she has every right to do so.
Confusing? Potentially. But that's the other thing I learned from my conversation with Jennie. She knows me. There's a very good chance she wouldn't have peppered her thoughts with adoption clauses if she hadn't been talking to me. But she was, so she did.
The only way we can guarantee being compassionate and loving to everyone is to get to know everyone. Learn what makes certain groups of people, and certain individuals, uncomfortable. And then don't do or say those things. Inevitably we all say offensive things to each other, but the key is to ask forgiveness and then change, or to tell someone when you are offended. Only with honesty and a ready forgiveness can we deal with issues of stereotypes and prejudice.
Thus endeth my soap box.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
No Man Is An Island, But This Woman Might Be
I recently watched this video by Nerimon, which is all about a psychological mind story starring a cube, a ladder, and a horse. These things end up representing yourself, your friends, and your love interest. The guy in the video had a really fascinating revelation--the ladder leaned against the ice cube, and the horse tried to climb the ladder but couldn't. Everything made sense according to his real life, and everything was intertwined and healthy.
Me? I played along as the scene was described. My Tesseract cube (I view myself as awesome and superpowered.....or maybe I'm just still obsessed with The Avengers) sat alone, and the ladder leaned against a wall away from the cube. The horse just kind of stood behind the cube, not interacting with anything.
Nothing interacted with me (the cube). My friends (the ladder) leaned on something else, and my love interest (the horse) was behind me and unimportant. This is probably more indicative of my life than I want it to be, because that level of independence strikes me as a little sad. But it's true. I don't allow myself to rely on others (not long term, anyway), and I don't really care if others rely on me.
At least I'm the Tesseract. Aw yeah.
Me? I played along as the scene was described. My Tesseract cube (I view myself as awesome and superpowered.....or maybe I'm just still obsessed with The Avengers) sat alone, and the ladder leaned against a wall away from the cube. The horse just kind of stood behind the cube, not interacting with anything.
Nothing interacted with me (the cube). My friends (the ladder) leaned on something else, and my love interest (the horse) was behind me and unimportant. This is probably more indicative of my life than I want it to be, because that level of independence strikes me as a little sad. But it's true. I don't allow myself to rely on others (not long term, anyway), and I don't really care if others rely on me.
At least I'm the Tesseract. Aw yeah.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
My Spiritual Gift is Coercion
Between Lindsay accidentally calling exhortation "extortion" and me intentionally calling it "coercion," our church might as well join the mafia.
A couple weeks ago Bill asked a bunch of new people to consider joining the choir for a special service. At the next practice, I was the only new person (because saying no to Bill is a physical impossibility for me). As soon as I went home, I messaged several people I knew, and at the next practice six of them were there to sing.
Several months ago when we were planning our Fellowship Weekend, I went around to everyone in the youth group and practically forced them to sign up. We had higher numbers than ever before.
What I'm saying is, I've got powers of persuasion. And I really like using them. It kind of feels like a superpower.
But really, it's cool to finally realize what one of my spiritual gifts is. That whole concept seemed so vague and ultra-spiritual for most of my life, but now I see exhortation in my every day life. I see how God can use it, and I see how I'm good at it, and I see how I could become better.
My favorite way God has used my exhortation is the continuing mission trips to Senegal. God used my life and my obedience to bring Fatick to my church's awareness, and two years later, teams are still visiting that tiny city in West Africa bi-annually.
I want that to be my job. Going to new places, then telling others about them so they can start and/or continue ministries there. That's me, coercing people into serving God.
A couple weeks ago Bill asked a bunch of new people to consider joining the choir for a special service. At the next practice, I was the only new person (because saying no to Bill is a physical impossibility for me). As soon as I went home, I messaged several people I knew, and at the next practice six of them were there to sing.
Several months ago when we were planning our Fellowship Weekend, I went around to everyone in the youth group and practically forced them to sign up. We had higher numbers than ever before.
What I'm saying is, I've got powers of persuasion. And I really like using them. It kind of feels like a superpower.
But really, it's cool to finally realize what one of my spiritual gifts is. That whole concept seemed so vague and ultra-spiritual for most of my life, but now I see exhortation in my every day life. I see how God can use it, and I see how I'm good at it, and I see how I could become better.
My favorite way God has used my exhortation is the continuing mission trips to Senegal. God used my life and my obedience to bring Fatick to my church's awareness, and two years later, teams are still visiting that tiny city in West Africa bi-annually.
I want that to be my job. Going to new places, then telling others about them so they can start and/or continue ministries there. That's me, coercing people into serving God.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Captain America Thoughts, Of All Things
Captain America is probably my least favorite Avenger, through no fault of his own. He's just not damaged in a way that interests me, and plus, I disliked his lead-in movie.
A lot of people told me Captain America was the best of the Marvel films. But it completely rubbed me the wrong way. The message seemed to be, "It's adorable that you want to help out, but we're not going to crush on you or use you until you're super buff and hot."
This mentality is problematic, right?
But then in The Avengers, I found myself liking him (and the way the narrative treated him) a whole lot more. Yes, he's spry, can jump around, and uses his shield as a boomerang. But in the climactic battle, he's stuck on the NY roads with non-superheroes Black Widow and Hawkeye. To add salt to this wound, Hawkeye gets hauled up to the rooftops where he shoots the bad guys dead, and Black Widow hijacks a Chitauran ride to the Tesseract, where she saves the world.
Captain America? Still on the ground, fighting individual bad guys and rescuing trapped civilians.
But here's the thing. His mundane heroics (mundane by superhero standards, at least) are VALUED. His size and athletic prowess are not what makes him special. It's his leadership, his tactics, and his willingness to sacrifice that make him so great. And those are all things he had before being supersized.
I never thought I'd write meta about Captain America, but such is the power of Joss Whedon. He really gets these characters, and he finds worth in THEM, not in how flashily they accomplish things.
A lot of people told me Captain America was the best of the Marvel films. But it completely rubbed me the wrong way. The message seemed to be, "It's adorable that you want to help out, but we're not going to crush on you or use you until you're super buff and hot."
This mentality is problematic, right?
But then in The Avengers, I found myself liking him (and the way the narrative treated him) a whole lot more. Yes, he's spry, can jump around, and uses his shield as a boomerang. But in the climactic battle, he's stuck on the NY roads with non-superheroes Black Widow and Hawkeye. To add salt to this wound, Hawkeye gets hauled up to the rooftops where he shoots the bad guys dead, and Black Widow hijacks a Chitauran ride to the Tesseract, where she saves the world.
Captain America? Still on the ground, fighting individual bad guys and rescuing trapped civilians.
But here's the thing. His mundane heroics (mundane by superhero standards, at least) are VALUED. His size and athletic prowess are not what makes him special. It's his leadership, his tactics, and his willingness to sacrifice that make him so great. And those are all things he had before being supersized.
I never thought I'd write meta about Captain America, but such is the power of Joss Whedon. He really gets these characters, and he finds worth in THEM, not in how flashily they accomplish things.
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